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New Study Says People Value Visuals Over Audio, Even For a Song

A new study says that humans will value visual cues over auditory cues, even when it comes to music, because we're visual beasts, of course.

Chia-Jung Tsay—a Harvard graduate and University College London professor—took both visual and sound recordings from classical music competitions, and asked participants in her study to pick who they thought won the competition. For a reward, the participants would get $8 for guessing the correct winner. Tsay split the group into threes: some of them only got sounds, some only video, and some both sound and video. The people with the highest rate of accuracy came from the group that only saw video of the competition—even if the participant had training in music or none.

Her findings seem to suggest that the participants, as well as the judges in the competition, gave visual performances more value, but could also mean that a person's skill can be reflected in their body language.

"What this suggests is that there may be a way that visual information is prioritized over information from other modalities," Tsay said. "In this case, it suggests that the visual trumps the audio, even in a setting where audio information should matter much more."